


Earth and Sky

by applesofthemoon



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Abuse, Forced Pregnancy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25716052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applesofthemoon/pseuds/applesofthemoon
Summary: AU where Terra doesn't throw off Slade's control and ages into adulthood as his prisoner and his tool. She's not the apprentice he wanted, but she can give him something better.
Kudos: 7





	Earth and Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reincarnation of an idea I had some sixteen years ago, when I was too young to explore it with any sensitivity or nuance. Still, credit where credit is due. This one's for you, middle-school applesofthemoon.

Sometimes you think the worst part is that you were Slade’s second choice. It was Robin he wanted as his apprentice, not you. You threw everything away to follow a man who was only settling for you.

Sometimes that seems like the worst part. Other times, the rest of it seems much worse.

—

There is one thing you can do for him that Robin couldn’t have done. You’re not his apprentice anymore; he gave up on that when his brainwashing wore off. You can’t continue his work after he’s gone if you don’t believe in it. What you can do is give him another chance, a fresh start. Better than an apprentice: an heir.

You’re nineteen when he comes to the steel-walled bunker where he keeps you and does it to you fully dressed on your mattress. You tell your body there’s no point in resisting, but it doesn’t listen to you. Your legs lock together and won’t be pried apart. _Relax,_ he says, and you do. You can’t help it.

There’s no passion in it, on your part or his. You hear yourself grunting each time he thrusts into you, the sounds leaving your throat without your willing them to. He doesn’t make any sound at all. When he’s done, he does up his pants and leaves.

It happens three or four times a week for several weeks, and then it stops. That’s when you know he’s gotten what he wanted. He knew it first because your suit monitors everything that goes on in your body and reports it to him. You have no secrets from him, even on a cellular level.

Your breasts ache and your ankles swell and your belly inflates like a balloon, but at least he doesn’t do it to you anymore. He doesn’t beat you, either, for fear of damaging the precious cargo you carry. During the last couple of months he stops sending you on errands at night. In your dreams you breathe fresh air and feel earth under your feet.

You give birth alone, although of course you’re never really alone. He’s always there, lurking just out of sight. As soon as it’s over, he appears to cut the cord and take the baby away for inspection. You lie on your mattress, emptied out, the pain of labor echoing through your body. You don’t even know if you have a son or a daughter.

 _A daughter,_ he tells you when he returns the baby, having deemed her fit to raise. She’s so delicate it scares you to hold her at first. She doesn’t know that you can’t be trusted, that you break everything you touch.

You name her Sky, because he doesn’t care and because her eyes are blue like the daytime sky, a blue you haven’t seen in years. Together you’re earth and sky, two halves of a whole world. And Slade is the Sun, holding you both in his orbit.

—

You’re not sure whether to hope Sky has inherited your power or hope she hasn’t. If she doesn’t have it, Slade might decide not to bother training her as his heir. You might persuade him to leave her somewhere out in the world, for someone else to find and raise. She might have a chance at a good life, a free life. Without you.

You realize you have to hope for that, so you do. You hope and hope and even say some silent prayers, although you don’t know who you’re praying to. You don’t remember when your power first manifested, which makes you think you were very young. Any day could be the day your hopes are dashed.

When Sky is three, you return early one morning from an errand and collapse onto the mattress you now share with her. Things didn’t go as planned and you had to fight, so you’re tired. You sleep until midafternoon. Waking, you hear Sky’s little-girl giggle from a few feet away. It’s the only thing that makes you smile anymore.

You stop smiling when you sit up and see what’s making her giggle. She’s found a pebble, probably tracked in between the treads of your shoes, and she’s twirling it in midair with little twitches of her forefinger. A yellow aura surrounds the pebble, its brightness jarring in the dim bunker.

You blame yourself, because you didn’t hope with your whole heart. There was a part of you, a pathetic, selfish part, that didn’t want to be alone again, even though it’s what you deserve. You had a chance for companionship and you refused it, laughed in its face. Now you’ll have it indefinitely, at the price of Sky’s freedom.

It crosses your mind to try to hide her power from him, but that’s impossible. He sees everything either one of you does. Minutes after you wake up, he arrives to take her for training.

—

Sky grows and changes, coming to resemble you so much that it hurts to look at her. There must be something of her father in her, some feature that’s like his, but you wouldn’t know. In all the time you’ve belonged to him, you’ve never seen his face.

He trains Sky so rigorously that she never has a chance to develop your problems with control. She can do things at five that you didn’t master until you were fifteen. He lets you watch their lessons if you don’t talk or get in the way. 

Sometimes he has you spar with her to give her experience fighting someone who isn’t him. You do it willingly, thinking it’s the lesser of two evils. You can’t hold back without him knowing, but you’re probably less likely to hurt her than him using your body.

Then she’s ten, and you don’t have to worry about hurting her anymore. She’s not just in control, she’s strong, and quick, and ruthless—all the things he’s taught her to be. During one sparring session, she knocks you to the earthen floor of the training room, and you black out briefly from the impact. 

When you come to, she’s standing over you, her hair slipping over one eye. She doesn’t reach down to help you up. She just looks at you, cold as the steel walls of the bunker. Cold as the man who built them.

You chose this life, even if you’ve regretted it a million times since. Sky didn’t. She was born to it; she doesn’t know anything different. He’s going to ruin her, rip out everything that’s good inside her, and she never had a choice.

Maybe you can give her one.

—

She’s excited to go on her first errand outside the bunker. She has an outfit, although not a suit like yours—why should he bother when she’s so well behaved without one?—and she’s been rehearsing her part of the plan for days. She promises him she won’t fail.

 _No you won’t,_ he agrees with her, but his eye is on you.

You know what it means: _see that she doesn’t fail, or you’ll pay the price._ You can accept that. You’ve been paying for a long time already.

Your task tonight is to steal bioweapons from a heavily guarded government research facility. Heavily guarded aboveground, anyway. You and Sky tunnel in from below, bypassing several layers of security. Once you’re in, it’s a simple matter of locating the vials he wants and leaving the way you came.

You’ve been rehearsing your plan for days, too, in your head. The timing has to be exactly right. If it’s not, and he realizes what you’re doing in time to stop you, you won’t get the chance to try again.

Sky is behind you, a few paces back. You slow your stride to let her catch up. When she's almost on you, you throw your elbow backward with all the force you can muster, smashing it into her face. Then you yank down the lever of a wall-mounted fire alarm. Its scream hits your ears in the same second as his snarl. _Terra, no!_

You jump back into the tunnel you came through, leaving Sky sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from her broken nose. You think she must be unconscious, or she’d be up and striking back at you, ignoring the blood, ignoring the pain. That’s how well he’s trained her.

He tries to make you go back for her, like you knew he would. His will sweeps over you like an ocean wave and it takes all you have not to give in to it. You only need a few minutes, but each second feels like the last one you can possibly stand.

You stand those seconds, every one of them, by remembering how she looked at you after she knocked you out in the training room. By remembering how much she reminded you of yourself.

You hear sirens, distant but growing closer. Finally, they’re close enough that the tide changes, and he pulls you back to him instead of up to her. With sirens come firefighters, and police, and worse. The Titans have long gone their separate ways, but there are new heroes now, attracted to this city by the kind of criminal that operates here. He won’t pit you against them, not with you fighting him every step of the way. He won’t risk losing both of his prized possessions.

Halfway back to the bunker, he gives you your body back, and you keep going in the same direction as before. You can fight him for a little while, but you can’t run from him. Even if you could, you have nowhere to go.

—

For your disobedience, he beats you so badly you would think he was going to kill you if you didn’t know better. He’ll blacken your eyes, break your ribs and teeth, but he won’t kill you. That would be merciful, and he doesn’t show mercy, ever.

 _You probably think what you did was noble,_ he says. _A sacrifice._ He doesn’t shout when he’s angry. His voice gets lower and lower, until it’s like you’re hearing it in your head. _Don’t lie to yourself. You just couldn’t stand that she was better than you._

He keeps hitting you, but you stop feeling it. You think of Sky, where they might have taken her. The hospital, probably, for her broken nose. Where next? Anywhere as long as it’s not here.

You know you haven’t bought her freedom; you’ve only bought her the chance to be free. The choice. She could choose to come back here, but you hope she won’t. You hope he’s right, and she’s better than you.


End file.
